Piracy

Authors and publishers usually do not like the idea of having their books pirated.

But when author Lloyd Shepherd got the dreaded Google alert linking to a request for an eBook version of his book The English Monster on file sharing site Mobilism, he decided to respond directly.

In an essay in the Guardian, Shepherd recounted how he told the book pirate how much time he spent writing and editing the book. Shepherd wrote: “This is my first book, and this is my first experience of someone attempting to produce a pirate version of it (I do not use the word ‘pirate’ pejoratively, mind). Is there any reason why I shouldn’t expect to be compensated for the time I have put into this?” Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

A group of 17 publishers from around the world–including HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Oxford University Press–have taken legal action to shut down two file sharing sites.

eBookNewser has more: “Yesterday, the Irish-based operators of www.library.nu and www.ifile.it were served with court orders. In the complaint, the publishers claim that www.library.nu illegally acquired more than 400,000 copyrighted eBooks and made them available for free. In addition, the site owners allegedly earned more than $10 million in advertising from the site.”

Tom Allen, president/CEO of Association of American Publishers stated: “For every rogue site that is taken down, there are hundreds more demanding similar effort.  I can’t think of a more timely example of the need for additional tools to expedite such action.”

Currently, library.nu redirects to Google Books and ifile.it has an error message that says “No upload servers currently available, try uploading at a later time.”

Signing a blog post as “Pirate Coelho,” bestselling author Paulo Coelho has joined a promotional program at the infamous file sharing site, The Pirate Bay.

Coelho praised the piracy site and urged his readers to download his work on peer-to-peer file sharing sites. The decision has already generated hundreds of comments–what do you think?

Check it out: “The Pirate Bay starts today a new and interesting system to promote arts. Do you have a band? Are you an aspiring movie producer? A comedian? A cartoon artist? They will replace the front page logo with a link to your work. As soon as I learned about it, I decided to participate. Several of my books are there, and as I said in a previous post, ‘My thoughts on SOPA,’ the physical sales of my books are growing since my readers post them in P2P sites. Welcome to download my books for free and, if you enjoy them, buy a hard copy – the way we have to tell to the industry that greed leads to nowhere.” (Image via)

The founder and some employees of the file sharing site Megaupload have been indicted by federal prosecutors. The site, which once hosted pirated copies of books, comic books, movies, software and other digital goods, has been shut down.

Below, we’ve embedded the complete indictment–alleging that the pirated material on the site caused “estimated harm” of $500 million for copyright holders. How do you think these massive piracy cases should be handled?

Here is an excerpt: “Since at least September 2005, Megaupload.com has been used by the defendants and other members and associates of the Mega Conspiracy to willfully reproduce and distribute many millions of infringing copies of copyrighted works, including motion pictures, television programs, musical recordings, electronic books, images, video games,and other computer software. Over the more than five years of its existence, the Mega Conspiracy has aggressively expanded its operations into a large number of related Internet businesses, which are connected directly to, or at least financially dependent upon, the criminal conduct associated with Megaupload.com.”

Read more

In less than two weeks, comedian Louis CK has counted $1 million from sales of his “Live at the Beacon Theater” comedy DVD on PayPal. The comedian sold the DVD for $5 to fans without any digital rights management (DRM) protection.

Nearly all digital books currently contain some sort of DRM protection–making it harder for readers to take notes, read on different devices or share the book. Publishers and authors should read Louis CK’s argument against using these tools to restrict your readership.

Here’s more from the post: “This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use.”

Read more

Publisher John Wiley & Sons has filed a lawsuit against 27 BitTorrent users who distributed digital copies of books from the For Dummies series without authorization. Follow this PDF link to download the suit.

According to TorrentFreak, the complaint lists charges that include copyright infringement, trademark infringement and trademark counterfeiting. They also noted that the ‘BitTorrent for Dummies‘ book is not mentioned in the suit. Publishers Weekly reports that the publisher intends to combat piracy by “educating and stopping people from illegally copying its content.”

Here’s more from the complaint: “Defendants are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley…For example, BitTorrent users on a single site, demonoid.me, have downloaded one of the works that is the subject of this suit, Photoshop CS 5 All-In-One For Dummies, more than 74,000 times since June 6, 2010 … The damage to Wiley includes hark to its goodwill and reputation in the marketplace for which money cannot compensate. Wiley is particularly concerned that its trademarks are used in connection with unauthorized electronic products, which could contain malicious viruses.”

The Curtis Agency and E-Reads will tackle eBook piracy as a team, making it easier for authors to find pirated material and send take-down letters.

They have enlisted the technological assistance of Muso TNT, a company that targets piracy for other media industry clients. Muso developed a system that targets popular file sharing sites like RapidShare and Megaupload.

Here’s more from the article: “Using the Muso technology, legitimate content providers authorize the antipiracy service to launch search engine ‘spiders’ to crawl over the Internet and detect unauthorized files. A significant feature is that the search criterion is by author, not by title. As the spiders locate pirated files, they store the results on a password-protected login page for review.”

Read more

Author Mary Roach shared a funny and timely story on Twitter recently, forgiving a reformed book pirate in a post.

She wrote: “This is a first: Guy mailed a fan letter, a $10 bill, and apologies for having downloaded a pirated copy of Packing for Mars. Forgiven.”

The post spawned a wide ranging conversation about book piracy on Reddit as different readers confessed to piracy. One reader explained: “I’ve actually bought books and then downloaded pirated copies because I prefer to read them on my computer.” Another reader added: “I’d be far more happy directly sending the author the money as opposed to giving it to a publishing house.”

 

The High Low tackled one of the toughest questions facing publishers: “Will eBooks become the next Napster?” They quoted some surprising statistics.

Here’s more from the article: “One in every three people who download e-books on their digital readers do so illegally, according to a survey of 1,959 consumers conducted by a British law firm … Record labels notoriously lost millions thanks to Napster (which was eventually ruled illegal), and now publishers are staring down the same tunnel.”

The same survey also revealed that twenty five percent of those who admitted to illegally downloading eBooks would continue to do so in the future. Because illegally downloaded books are not physical objects, pirates tend not to classify their activities as stealing. What do you think about this dilemma?

Today the file-sharers at The Pirate Bay attacked a European Union proposal that could set up a digital firewall blocking off file-sharing sites around Europe.

The Pirate Bay posted this message on the site: “the Battle of Internets is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of an Uncensored civilization! Upon it depends our own free life, and the long continuity of our sites and our trackers. The whole fury and might of the enemy will very soon be turned on us … if we fail, then the whole world, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

We continue to track the most popular single title eBooks (using the site’s “Top 100″ list for eBooks) on the file sharing site. As you can see by the list below (titles, but no links!), the most popular books aren’t the titles you might expect…

Read more